When Yngwie created his own record label, Rising Force Records, he put out a number of things that had been sitting in the vault for a while and this is one of them. The concert was filmed in Seoul, Korea on July 7th, 2001 and was finally released in 2009. I’m glad it has finally seen the light of day.

LIVE IN KOREA is Yngwie’s 11th home video and it is pretty minimalistic. The title is dull, the cover art is dull and there is no booklet. In addition, there is no menu at all! There is no track selection, no bonus features, you just push play and the concert runs for one hour ands 24 minutes and it is over. There are no credits and the DVD does not even mention who was performing in the band for that show. In terms of technical presentation and design, the DVD is quite weak.

The concert itself is pretty decent, it was filmed on the War To End All Wars tour. The set-list heavily features that album playing exactly half of it, seven of the 14 tracks, which is pretty cool. The concert has 14 songs and five of the cuts are drawn from his first three albums. The sound quality is quite good as well. The visual part of the show is also sub-standard. It is a multi-camera shoot with a boom camera sweeping across the crown, a drum cam, a behind the stage shot and several more and the editing is adequate. However, I’m not sure about how cameras work but they seemed to be missing filters or something because with so many lights, fog and flames the while concert is very blurry! On occasion you can’t even see the performers! The stage set and show are massive with tons of huge flames, lights, strobes and more…the production value is very high but it was poorly captured with too many colours and flashing lights washing out all the details.

I feel LIVE IN KOREA was probably filmed for some state sponsored TV broadcast as teach songs is introduced with a graphic in the bottom left hand corner. At various times you can see serious men in black suits and badges watching the show from the side of the stage. The crowd is massive at an indoor venue but there is no long hair anywhere and no blond hair anywhere! The fans also wave a lot of glow sticks, which seems out of place to my western perception of what a Metal crowd is like.

LIVE IN KOREA is one of Yngwie’s weaker DVD’s (and as I mentioned he has lots of DVD’s) and although the visual aspect is not the best, the sound is good and this is a nice concert capturing a moment in time. It is a privilege to see and hear Mark Boals in action. I only just recently bought this DVD and in my mind it is a bit of a special tribute to Mats Olausson (keyboards) and Randy Coven (bass) who both recently (2014/2015) passed away less than a year apart. They will be missed and fans of Yngwie will enjoy this concert as it is a testament to his massive global popularity.